Touch-sensitive devices such as mobile phones, music/video players, tablet computers, and the like have become increasingly desirable for consumers in recent years. Many such devices are configured to detect user touch to receive user input as opposed to more classical user input mechanisms such as external buttons, a keyboard, and/or a trackpad/mouse. Detection of user touch to receive user input enables devices to be smaller and/or conform to desired form factors, because other mechanisms for user input (e.g., input keys, keyboard, mouse, trackpad) are not needed. Detection of user touch as device input may also be desirable because it may more closely mimic user interaction with real world objects (e.g., flipping through a newspaper, book, stack of compact discs or digital video discs (DVDs)).
Known touch-sensitive devices may be configured to present a graphical keyboard using a display of the device. To enter text into the keyboard, a user may touch keys of the graphical keyboard that represent characters. For example, to type a “j” character, a user may touch an image of an icon presented on a display that depicts the character “j.” A graphical keyboard may also include images of icons representing functional keys typically found on a classical keyboard, for example tab, spacebar, enter (return), or other functional keys.
Known applications (e.g., mobile device software) may provide a user with options for the editing or entry of text. For example, some touch-sensitive devices may provide a user with options to type characters (or modify existing text) in different text formats, for example in bold, italics, or underlined formats. Known touch sensitive device applications may further provide a user with options to select different text sizes (e.g., 10, 12, 14 point font), different fonts (e.g., Times New Roman, Calibri), different line spacing, or other formatting characteristics for text entry or modification. Such applications may provide a user with a button, pull-down menu, or other similar input mechanism presented using a display of the device to select different text-formatting options. A user may select one or more formatting options and enter text in the selected one or more formats. A user may further select, using various combinations of touch gestures detectable by the device, desired text to change formatting for the text. For example, a user may select (e.g., highlight) desired text, and select from among options as described above to change a format of the selected text (e.g., from bold to underlined).